Page 89 of I'm Not Yours
“Give me a morning hug, June!” My father smiled, hugging me close. “I love you, baby. We’re having the MacKenzie family Scottish breakfast, then the scavenger hunt will begin.”
“Take your wand,” my mom said, kissing me on the cheek again. “Don’t drop it during the hunt, or you lose! It must be with you at all times. Oh, how I adore you, June. You are spectacular!”
“Thanks, Mom. I think I’ll cast a spell on you now.” I waved the wand.
She opened the door to the dining room. They have the largest dining room I’ve ever seen. My parents constructed a table to seat thirty. I hugged my brother, March. He wears his silky brown hair to his shoulders and resembles our father. Women go crazy for him. “Lookin’ wonderful, sis.”
September burst into tears and hugged me hard. “Sister! I have missed you!” September is blond-haired, like August and me, but she has blue streaks in her short wedge of hair and a tattoo on her left arm with our family’s names shaping a heart.
“My Scottish clansmen and women,” my father announced, deep voice carrying to each corner. “June has arrived!” He fisted his hands high into the air.
We are so into our Scottish heritage, our kilts and tartans and family crest, but the truth is we are a multicultural group. A United Nations Scottish-American family.
My cousin Earl picked up his bagpipes and blew. He is a champion bagpipe player. His father is from Zimbabwe. Great-uncle Seamus was, indeed, dressed as Abe Lincoln. He blew me a kiss. His mother’s family is from Japan. Chuck and Duck, thecircus performers, were there, too. Their father is Russian. They did handstands in greeting. Later they would put on a neat show with sticks set on fire. My cousin Marci Shinola, who shot her neighbor in the knee, grinned at me and waved. “I’m out of the slammer, June!” Her mother is from Venezuela. The twins who always dress in monster outfits have a father from Mexico. They growled at me.
My family cheered a hello.
Yes, I was home.
The MacKenzies have many traditions. One of them is that the women—only women—get together before every wedding and have a twenty-four-hour Salute to Our Heroine Geraldine. No, it is not a bachelorette party. That happens the night before the rehearsal dinner.
The Salute to Our Heroine Geraldine involves a real-life story straight from Scotland. It’s all about Great-great-great-etc.-Grandma Geraldine who started the American branch of MacKenzies. Apparently she did not want to marry the man her father had chosen. She was sixteen, and you know how those rebellious teenagers are; it’s so difficult to force them to marry someone they don’t want to marry. So, Geraldine left her clan. She walked. And walked and walked. In fact, she walked so far away that on her wedding day, though her family hunted high and low, they couldn’t find her.
There was no wedding.
Days after the wedding, she returned. Rested, refreshed, relaxed.
Family lore has it that she declared if she was forced to marry someone else, she’d leave for America. Well, in due time, her father corralled her into another marriage, but this time he had the relatives stand guard so she couldn’t take off.
It didn’t work. She managed to sneak off, this time with a bag in hand, and darned if she didn’t land in America a year later, dead poor and sick from the trip. She later married Cormac MacKenzie and had eight children. She lived to be ninety-two years old. Her father forgave her. Her ex-fiancés did not.
So, in her honor, the Salute to Our Heroine Geraldine involves all of the women going on a hike early in the morning. A looong hike, to remember the long walk that Geraldine endured to escape her wedding. Then we volunteer our time to clean something, usually it’s a women’s shelter, a soup kitchen, etc, to show respect for the hard work that Geraldine did as a maid to earn passage to America. We take a boat ride, with a lot of wine, to memorialize her trip to America.
After that, we Americanize the journey: We all go to the spa.
Many spas. They can’t hold all of us.
“Geraldine would have wanted a spa trip if she’d had the opportunity to go to one,” my mom always said. “She would know she well and truly deserved it after all she’d been through.”
“In spirit, she’s with us, getting a hot rock massage,” Aunt Wilma declared.
“She’s with us as we get oatmeal and chocolate treatments spread all over our bodies,” my sister September said.
“At Myrna’s wedding I had the lemongrass and vanilla massage,” Cousin Darla said.
“I had the man masseuse,” my great-aunt Kaitlin said, leaning on her cane. “I saw him trying to peep at my bust. I saw him!”
That morning, at my parents’ house, we MacKenzie women met in the kitchen.
September yelled, pounding her chest, “Let me choose my own husband, or let me perish!”
“We will walk for your freedom, Geraldine, and for our own womanly freedoms!” August shouted, holding hiking boots in the air.
“We work in sisterhood with you, Geraldine!” Aunt Tobias declared, holding up two huge sponges.
“We sail in harmony with your ocean’s voyage!” Cousin Ally hollered, holding up a paddle.
“And,” my mom said . . .
